REL is very happy to announce a brand new project we are hosting in REL during 2019: American Examples. […]
Tag: theory
Whose Evangelicalism is in Ruins?
The American Academy of Religion, the national scholarly association for religious studies in America, just sent out its program of plenary addresses for its upcoming annual meeting this November. The abstract for David Gushee’s Presidential Address caught my eye. There are a number of things to say about this. First of all, I told ya’ll this would happen during the nomination process three years ago. Looking closely at the abstract, the phrase “will perform ‘religion in public’ in a confessional vein” […]
In Other Words…
Like some of you, I woke today to an email soliciting submissions for a special issue of the open access online journal Open Theology. The email opened as follows: A person who reads texts from other religious traditions sometimes encounters what the reader understands to be a transcendent encounter with ultimacy. Encounters with the ultimate – not only with texts but also with practices and persons – need to be taken into account theologically…. Now, I’m not going to harp […]
Coming Attractions: REL 490 Capstone Senior Seminar
REL 490 is the Department’s senior seminar, that’s offered each Spring. Required of all majors, its topic regularly changes as does the professor who offers it. The goal of the course is to offer some sort of test case or example that can provide an opportunity for students with wide interests to mull over the skills that were gained throughout the degree. This Spring it’s Prof. McCutcheon who is teaching the course and the topic is the work of Jonathan […]
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Looking Over and Overlooking
Thanks @McCutcheonSays for this mention of my online syllabus, in his discussion of Janet Jakobsen’s piece on relhttps://t.co/EkJiVE3hPM — Malory Nye (@malorynye) October 1, 2017 Malory Nye’s tweet, the other day, got me thinking… So I replied: For a while, now, I’ve had this feeling: as happens with any new and successfully reproduced social developments (or what advocates just call advances), newcomers to the group tend to normalize them. Which is a wonderful luxury, if you think about it — […]
Identity at the Crossroads of अवतार and Avatar: What’s Real about Hatsune Miku?
As a young lad in the 1984, I listened to the song by Rez Band that asked “Who’s Real Anymore?” Wendy Kaiser’s answer implicitly raises Holden Caulfield’s indictment of “phony” against the evangelists of her time. According to Kaiser, their televised personalities were not really Christian because their bottom line was money rather than real evangelism. Intellectual discussions about real versus not-real begin long before the 1980s. These discussions track along different lines, too. Questions concerning claims about reality have been […]
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How to Be Curious
Among my courses this Fall semester — starting in a little over a week — is one on theories of religion; in one way or another I’ve taught elements of a course like this many times (in fact, my intro course even touches on some of these topics), but rarely in a seminar devoted to nothing other than attempts to account for why people are religious. So deciding what to do in the course is always something worth thinking about. […]
The Problem of Belief
Were you following the three seasons of The Leftovers? If not, then I’ll not spoil the ending (too much), which aired a week ago. […]
The “Tyranny of Theory” is to Blame
The other day I came across this video, from a publisher advertising a recent textbook on world religions. […]
Pagan Rites in Space
Yes, cosmonauts apparently all pee on the back right tire of the bus that carries them to the launch pad, before they take off. At least the guys do; but the ladies are said to bring a vial of urine to pour on the tire. It’s a ritual. […]